In April 2014, I set myself the challenge of learning – and sharing – something new and useful every day (with the exception of weekends and bank holidays). Due to a family emergency (which I subsequently blogged about), I had to call a ten-day halt, but I resumed as soon as possible and extended the challenge by the missing days, to Friday 9 May. You can follow my progress and watch my end-of-challenge video report below. And check back for more, albeit less frequent, What I Learned Today blogs going forward.

What fair-minded people need to know about… Trump’s America

In the days before this year’s US presidential election, Donald Trump predicted that the result would be “Brexit-plus-plus-plus”. For me personally, “Brexit-plus-plus-plus” is a fair description of my personal reaction to the news: as an American who has lived in London most of her adult life, someone who has dual nationality, someone who campaigned hard in […]

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two months campaigning on behalf of Britain Stronger in Europe and Labour In for Britain. In these final days leading up to the EU Referendum next Thursday, 23 June, I’m actually IN Europe, on a long-planned holiday to my favourite European escape, Mallorca. And I’m feeling […]

Articles, quotes, radio and film documentaries feeding my new Tony Benn obsession

I knew embarrassingly little of Tony Benn before seeing Andy Barrett’s new play Tony’s Last Tape this past Sunday. (Read my separate blog on the production and interview with its star Philip Bretherton here.)

But since Sunday, boy have I been making up for lost time. After leaving the Bridgehouse, I’ve devoured obituaries and other articles […]

Hello, crazy collectors: 15 world record-breaking collections

If I had a bigger flat with lots of nice empty walls, I’d be ringing Hampstead Theatre and putting my name on a waiting list for some of the props in the current production of Peter Souter’s romantic comedy Hello/Goodbye.

Conversation with Caitlin Moran: Is homework helpful or harmful?

Here we are in week two of my new, non-theatrical blog challenge: to get Caitlin Moran to take notice of me and eventually become my best friend. And also to get me into the discipline of writing about something I normally wouldn’t once a week (i.e. not theatre) – something of my favourite columnist’s […]

What I learned today: End of challenge VIDEO report (+ my first-ever vlog!)

I officially finished my one-month blog challenge on 9 May 2014. And to celebrate, I set myself a new learning challenge: to film and edit my first-ever video blog, in which I grade my progress. So here’s my challenge on the challenge and the challenges I faced in completing it… You get the idea.

What I learned today: Where to get free water (and why you don’t need to ditch your bottle at airport security)

My partner’s sister Carry was in a tizz the other day as she related her airport tale of woe. She and her husband were travelling with their two thirsty children and had made the mistake of buying bottles of water for everyone before they checked in – only to have them confiscated a few […]

What I learned today: How to create a custom short URL (terri.im)

I’ve decided to squeeze in a special request before the official end of my #WhatILearnedToday daily blog challenge. If you follow me on Twitter (@TerriPaddock), you may have noticed – as keen follower and learner-requester Jonathan Baz (@MrJonathanBaz) did – that my tweet hyperlinks have looked a little different recently. Here are a few examples […]

What I learned today: Five-minute meditation for dummies (you DON’T have to sit like this!)

Learning meditation is one of those things I’ve had on my life to-do list for years. I have several friends who swear by it and who have been to multiple escape-way-out-of-London retreats where they do NOTHING but meditate – well, and sleep and eat, but no talking, reading or writing – for days on […]

What I learned today: How to find your Myers-Brigg personality type

Have you been Myers-Brigged? I first heard of this “personality inventory” test in a psychology course at university, and first encountered it in the real world in my late twenties when working at a high-tech PR agency in London. The firm used various Myers-Brigg questionnaires during recruitment and for planning team and management structures. […]

Composing yesterday’s blog about my recent experience with Hopi ear candles, first evangelising and then debunking them, provided me with a reminder lesson opportunity about confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out “proof” that confirms our preconceived notions on a subject or existing belief – and we are all prone to […]

What I learned today: Hopi ear candles are a con (probably)

I first came across Hopi ear candles about 15 years ago at a new age festival at Alexandra Palace in London where an exhibitor was selling, for my pocket, far-too-pricey therapy sessions. Shortly after, while at a meeting in Willesden Green, I happened upon a homeopathic shop that stocked ear candles by Biosun, the […]

What I learned today: Help! SOS doesn’t mean anything

With all the blood and gore – and fantastically poetic staging care of director John Tiffany and choreographer Steven Hoggett – Morse code may not be the first thing you associate with the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of vampire Let the Right One, now playing at the West End’s Apollo Theatre. But it […]

What I learned today: How to feel more powerful in two minutes

Even if you’re not a great reader of it, you will know that your body language communicates volumes to others. First impressions are formed in less than ten seconds and, overall, the actual content of what we say to someone will only comprise about 11% of the message they take away about us after […]

What I learned today: Nespresso latte making for dummies in 7 steps (with BIG pictures)

I’m currently holed up in a small seaside village in Mallorca – no Starbucks or any other type of coffee chain round here – and my live-in barista Peter is about to abandon me to return to the real world (aka London).

What I learned today: Why you recognise a face before you remember a name

The past two blogs have been pretty serious – and long! – so here’s a shorter one for a change of pace. Ever run into someone you know but haven’t seen in awhile. You know you know them, you recognise their face. But you can’t for the life of you recall their name. Maybe […]

What I learned today: How to care for someone with delirium

Yesterday, I told you about what’s been happening with my father, who slipped into an extended Delirium following knee replacement surgery. For the family, seeing a loved one in Delirium can be highly distressing, but for the sufferer, it can be absolutely terrifying, and that terror can increase their confusion. Their best chance at […]

What I learned today: The difference between delirium and dementia – and how it can affect your parents

(Preface: After a two-week, medically-necessitated hiatus, I’m able to resume my learning blog challenge – with a serious topic. I urge you to read this one, especially if you have elderly parents facing an operation at any point in the future.)

What I learned today: Free wifi at Heathrow … 45 minutes and counting

The follow-up family call came last night so this morning I’m at Heathrow waiting for my flight to Huntsville, Alabama via Washington DC. (In case you ever wondered, there are no direct flights from London – or anywhere international – to Hunstville. I can travel to San Francisco in half the time, despite Huntsville […]

What I learned today: How to file away your worries

The plan today was to tell you what I’ve learned about Morse Code… Then this morning, I woke up to a clutch of worrying texts from my family back in the States. What was meant to be a routine operation on my father has gone wrong with some truly horrific, unforeseen consequences.

What I learned today: How to get the best bits of church with pop songs and no mention of God

Having just posted about St Paul’s Cathedral, it may seem a little odd to immediately follow up with an apparently “anti-church” blog, but I did warn you that my topics, and the scheduling of them, would be random as part of this month’s challenge! So here goes on today’s… I have many deeply religious […]

What I learned today: London has two St Paul’s Cathedrals

I’ve lived in London for more than 20 years and there are still whole areas I’ve never heard of, let alone been to. Once you factor in the sheer magnitude of things I don’t know about London, both past and present, well, that would be a world wide web of blogs on its own.

What I learned today: WordPress scheduling and the importance of designers

Today I learned something incredibly important if you’ve just set yourself a public challenge of blogging daily on a particular theme: in WordPress, if you pre-schedule a post to go live at a certain time, you better make sure you’ve used the scheduling dial correctly. (Make sure it’s a date in the future, click […]